✏️ Berna-Stencil

Berna-Stencil is an open source static site generator built on top of Eleventy, designed with one clear mission: make web development simple, approachable, and enjoyable — for everyone.

Berna-Stencil stays deliberately close to plain, vanilla web development — you work with real HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, not a heavy abstraction layer to learn first. That means a gentle, fast learning curve: the skills you build here are the same ones you'd use anywhere on the web.

Whether you're a seasoned developer looking for a clean starting point or a beginner taking your first steps into the world of web creation, Berna-Stencil gives you everything you need, right out of the box. No complicated setup, no hours spent reading documentation, no frustration — just a solid, well-structured foundation ready to become your next website.

✨ Why Berna-Stencil?

Building a website from scratch involves a lot of moving parts: templating engines, build pipelines, asset management, backend logic, project structure. Berna-Stencil takes care of all of that for you, so you can focus on what actually matters — your content and your ideas.

Because it keeps you close to the fundamentals instead of hiding them, you spend your time actually learning the web — not memorizing a framework's conventions that stop being useful the moment you switch tool.

• 🔧 Zero-config ready — install, create, and you're live in minutes
• 🔗 Integrated backend — essential server-side functionality included, no extra setup required
• 📁 Scalable structure — a clean, opinionated project layout that grows with your needs
• 🌍 Open source — free to use, free to modify, free to share

Prerequisites

• Node.js: v18.0.0 or higher
• Composer: latest stable version

• Optional: Better Nunjucks VS Code extension by Ed Heltzel

Installation

Install the Berna-Stencil CLI once, globally:

npm install -g berna-stencil

This gives you the bs command (and its identical alias berna).

Create a project

From the folder that contains your websites, run:

bs new your-project

The scaffolder is interactive: you choose the language (JavaScript/TypeScript) and the CSS framework, and all dependencies are installed automatically.

Then start the dev server and visit localhost:8080:

cd your-project
bs run

Commands

Run these from anywhere inside a project (except bs new, which you run wherever you want to create the project):

| Command | Description | |---|---| | bs new <name> | Scaffold a new project | | bs run | Start the dev server | | bs build | Build the site | | bs cli | Open the page-management assistant | | bs update | Update the CLI to the latest version | | bs ver | Show the installed and latest version | | bs help | Show the available commands |

Before scaffolding, bs new checks the npm registry for a newer version and offers to update first (via bs update). If the registry is unreachable, the check is skipped and creation proceeds normally.

berna is an identical alias for bs, if you prefer the longer name (berna new …, berna run, berna cli).

Managing pages

To create, remove or rename pages and configure the output path, open the interactive assistant:

bs cli

See docs/Assistant CLI.md for details.

Roadmap

• [ ] Add support for multiple themes
• [ ] Backend integration choice and switch between php, python or node